Page 69 of Artemis Awakening falls in the middle of a section, but I do think the line my gaze first rested on would make me read further.

“Griffin, you can’t possibly have ended your tale of the beginning of the end. It seems to me that all the ended were the lives of a few seegnur here on Artemis. What happened after?”

And Griffin goes on to explain. One paragraph in particular gives a vivid sense of just what sort of war this was:

“Bombs that could burrow to a planet’s molten core were launched, splitting planets into fragments. Specialists in fast-than-light travel were assassinated wholesale, thereby eliminating the psychic skills needed to fly the most sophisticated ships. Faster-than-light travel remained possible, but now that the courses of ships could be predicted, defenses could be erected…”

Griffin realizes he’s losing his audience – and admits that he’s losing himself as well – thus placing these events firmly in the context of long ago and far away.

And so he goes on, “In those days of war and destruction… Artemis was lost.”

But obviously, if Griffin is there, Artemis has been found again. Even if the reader hasn’t glanced at the book jacket and learned that Griffin is effectively stranded, I think there might be curiosity as to what this rediscovery could mean.

I also like that this page establishes the science fiction context of the book – but that the mention of psychic pilots makes clear that this is going to be a tale firmly anchored in delight and sense of wonder. And it is… It is indeed…